PRESS RELEASE -- July 7 -- Match.com has signed an agreement to acquire People Media, a leading operator of 27 targeted dating sites including BlackPeopleMeet, SingleParentMeet, SeniorPeopleMeet, BBPeopleMeet and LDSPlanet, with a combined 255K paying subscribers. IAC will pay $80m in cash for People Media, which had $11.6m of EBITDA in 2008. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
Mark Brooks: Spark Networks is going to have some stiff competition now. Match will be able to circulate traffic around multiple properties and monetize better. That will allow them to get more volume with their improve ARPU. Your comments please.
Acquiring dating sites is a single use trick.
Every online dating site acquired by IAC is destroyed, as UDate and NetClubEncuentro some years ago. They lost all their daters because they were "transferred" to Match.
USD 80,000,000 / 255,000 paying clients = USD313.70 per client; a too high price for those low quality daters
As online daters are using various sites at the same time, 255,000 paying subscribers from People Media not neccesarily will arithmetically add to IAC's previous 1,450,000 paying subscribers.
I seriously doubt IAC's all online dating sites can reach and sustain 2,000,000 paying subscribers before 2012
Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Jul 07, 2009 at 05:29 PM
I think this will open up some opportunities for other niche players to take market share of the niche sites peoplemedia operated, as match.com will likely fade the brands out.
Posted by: Will Moss | Jul 08, 2009 at 08:57 AM
still, not doing anything different. Lack of innovation means revenue will keep dropping.
Posted by: Matt | Aug 24, 2009 at 11:10 PM